RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan — Other than the concrete skeletal remains of a three-story office supply store, there was nothing on the expansive field.
Just acres and acres of dried grass.
As he was about to drive by the abandoned building, Masahiro Osada pointed to the area on the other side of the two-lane road.
“My restaurant was there,” he said in Japanese.
With his right index finger, Osada drew an imaginary line across his windshield.
“There was a road here,” he said. “Roki’s house was 30 or 40 meters down.”
On a day that came to be known as 3.11 — March 11, 2011 — more than 80% of the homes in this remote seaside community were destroyed by a tsunami, including that house.
The nine-year-old boy who lived there, Roki Sasaki, survived. His father, Kota, didn’t.
With his mother and two brothers, Sasaki moved to the nearby city of Ofunato. There, he became nationally famous by breaking Shohei Ohtani’s record for the fastest pitch ever clocked by a Japanese high school pitcher. He was later drafted by the Chiba Lotte Marines, for whom he pitched a perfect game. This winter, he signed with the Dodgers. On Wednesday, the 23-year-old right-hander is scheduled to make his major league debut in the second game of his team’s season-opening series against the Chicago Cubs at the Tokyo Dome.
Dodgers pitchers Roki Sasaki, left, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto wave to fans as they are introduced before an exhibition game against the Yomiuri Giants at the Tokyo Dome on Saturday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
His stage is now global but the people don’t think of him as a distant figure, even though he hasn’t resided here in more than 14 years. Rather than distance himself from his painful memories in Rikuzentakata, Sasaki has taken a proactive approach to preserve his more pleasant recollections of his countryside upbringing.
Sasaki returns every winter to hang out with old friends, to order his favorite tan tan noodles at Osada’s new restaurant, to work out on the baseball field at the city’s sports complex.
Locals call this place Takata for short. Sasaki calls it furusato — his hometown.
Sasaki’s father, Kota, was well-liked around Rikuzentakata.
“He was very kind,” Osada said. “He was always smiling.”
Osada was a close friend.
They vacationed together. They snowboarded together. They helped stage the city’s annual Tanabata festival in the summer together.
Kota was handy and worked at a nearby funeral home.
“When something in the restaurant was broken, he would fix it right away,” Osada said.
Almost every day, Osada used to see Kota in the front yard playing catch with his three boys. Kota knew his middle son, Roki, was special. In moments of drunken revelry, Kota used to boast to Osada that Roki was a future pro.
When Roki was eight years old, he joined the same baseball team as his older brother, Ryuki, who was three years his senior.
The team was coached by the current president of Sasaki’s 1,500-member city-sponsored fan club, Tomoyuki Murakami, a government official who was once a player for the only Takata High team to qualify for the national Koshien tournament.
“He already knew how to play catch,” Murakami said. “I didn’t have to teach him much.”
In November of that year, Murakami had Sasaki pitch for the first time. Sasaki was a third grader. His opponents were fourth and fifth graders.
Sasaki retired the side.
Four months later, everything changed.
Residents here received constant warnings about natural disasters throughout their childhoods.
Rikuzentakata borders Hirota Bay and is therefore susceptible to tsunamis. The city had an evacuation plan, but Murakami said it assumed only about 50 centimeters, or about 20 inches, of water would reach the front of city hall.
What came was something of an entirely different scale.
Osada was near the coastline working out with his son when the earth started to violently shake. The magnitude 9.1 earthquake, the strongest ever recorded in Japan, lasted six minutes.
Sirens blared, instructing residents to evacuate to higher ground, but Osada returned to his neighborhood in search of his daughter.
There, he saw Kota.
“Our eyes met,” Osada said.
Osada and his son received a phone call from his daughter, who informed them that she was at a nearby middle school. Osada packed his family in his car and drove to safety.
“If we had continued looking for her, we probably wouldn’t have made it either,” Osada said.
Osada never saw his friend again.
People stand among the rubble in Rikuzentakata in April 2011, a month after the town was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami.
(Sergey Ponomarev / Associated Press)
Rikuzentakata’s old city hall building used to be within a short walk of the Sasaki residence. Murakami and other city officials were trained to evacuate to the second floor, but the 40-foot wall of water that Murakami saw approaching was threatening to swallow the entire three-story structure.
“When we reached the roof,” he said, “there was already water there.”
Murakami scaled a small structure on the roof and pulled other city workers to safety, including the mayor. Right in front of them was another government three-story building.
“Most of the employees who ran in there didn’t make it,” Murakami said.
The exceptions were a couple of workers who reached the third floor and kept their heads in a small space under the ceiling and above the water surface. Murakami said he heard that when the water receded, the remains of the victims became visible.
Murakami told this story while seated in a conference room in Rikuzentakata’s current city headquarters.
He said of Sasaki: “He was here. Right below us is where the schoolyard used to be.”
Sasaki and other students at Takata Elementary School were gathered outside of their classrooms.
They were saved by an unidentified worker from a nearby business. The man was bleeding from his head, the result of being struck by an object that dropped from a store shelf, according to Nikkan Sports, which recently published an interview with him.
“You’re going to die!” the man screamed. “Run away! Run!”
The children obeyed.
A tsunami inundation sign is seen in March 2021 at an area destroyed by the 2011 tsunami in Rikuzentakata in which more than 1,700 people died in the town.
(Eugene Hoshiko / Associated Press)
“This was as far as the tsunami came,” Murakami said. “It didn’t go any farther. So if you ran just a little, you were safe.”
Sasaki’s mother, Yoko, told Nikkan Sports in 2019 that she was in Ofunato for work when the tsunami struck. She was unable to communicate with her sons, who spent the night together in a temporary shelter.
Yoko cried when she was reunited with her three boys the next day, according to the newspaper. She took them to a relative’s home in Ofunato.
Five days later, she received a phone call.
“They found him?” she asked.
In the same interview with Nikkan Sports, Yoko described how Roki’s eyes widened when overhearing her. He didn’t understand what the word “found” implied. He was nine years old.
Overlooking Sasaki’s old neighborhood, there is a memorial for the 1,709 people who lost their lives in the tsunami, each of their names carved into black granite. The name on the second row of the 24th column listing the victims from the 16th ward: Kota Sasaki.
Kota wasn’t the only member of the household who perished. Kota’s parents — Roki’s grandparents — were also killed.
In Rikuzentakata, a memorial for the 1,709 people who lost their lives in the tsunami features each of their names carved into black granite, including Roki Sasaki’s father, Kota.
(Dylan Hernández / Los Angeles Times)
The memorial is near a bus station, which provides the city of about 18,000 residents with its only mode of public transportation. Ritsuzentakata’s train station was never replaced.
The wreckage, and its aftermath, shaped Sasaki as a person.
“Everything that I have now can disappear in an instant,” Sasaki said in 2020. “As a person who is alive, I think I have to do my best to live on the behalf of people who lost their lives.”
Murakami kept an eye from a distance on Sasaki, who moved to Ofunato with his mother and two siblings after the disaster. Murakami lost a son and his mother, but he continued to coach his older son. There were times their team played against Sasaki’s.
“He should be our ace,” Murakami recalled thinking with a chuckle.
Yoshihiro Matsumoto, an employee at Rikuzentakata’s sporting goods store, sensed early on that Sasaki could follow Ohtani and Yusei Kikuchi as the Iwate prefecture’s next superstar.
Matsumoto maintained the glove of Sasaki’s batterymate at Ofunato High.
Most catchers replaced the laces on their mitts every six months. Sasaki’s replaced his every two.
In the first month of his final year of high school in 2019, Sasaki was invited to train with Japan’s junior national team. He threw a fastball that was registered at 163 kilometers per hour — or about 101 mph.
The previous high-school record, set by Ohtani, was 160 kilometers per hour — about 99 mph.
Suddenly, Sasaki was more than the country’s No. 1 prospect. He was on the radar of major league teams, including the Dodgers. He earned the nickname “Reiwa no Kaibutsu,” or “Monster of the Reiwa Era,” signaling the widespread belief that he was a generational talent.
But most of all, he was a symbol of the entire Tohoku region’s recovery.
“I think he’s become something like a treasure of Takata,” Osada said. “He’s given people courage.”
He was a fellow tsunami survivor, only he was about to take on the world.
On his way back to Ofunato from that national-team camp, Sasaki dropped by Shikairo, Osada’s Chinese restaurant. Osada rebuilt the eatery on higher ground, near the location of the old city hall. Osada hadn’t seen Sasaki since the tsunami but he recognized his mother.
A bowl of tan tan ramen at a restaurant Roki Sasaki goes to every time he visits Rikuzentakata. Masahiro Osada, the owner of the restaurant who was friends with Sasaki’s father, said the origins of the dish were inspired by Kota Sasaki.
(Dylan Hernández / Los Angeles Times)
Sasaki became an occasional visitor. He remained a customer even after he was drafted in the first round by the Marines in 2019, Osada sneaking the budding national celebrity into a VIP room through a back door. Osada rarely spoke to him about baseball, instead sharing with him stories about his father.
Osada smiled as he recalled the origins of his signature tan tan noodles.
Kota used to like the tan tan hot pot, which contained meats and vegetables. Osada was drinking with Kota one night when he noticed spicy broth remained at the bottom of the otherwise empty pot.
“Should we put something in this and eat it?” Osada asked.
Osada boiled noodles. He prepared tofu. He dumped the ingredients in the pot.
To this day, Sasaki orders the dish every time he visits.
Murakami was uncertain of how Sasaki viewed Rikuzentakata. He gained clarity in early 2022, when Sasaki was entering his third season with the Marines. The then-20-year-old Sasaki was approaching his seijinshiki, a coming-of-age ceremony staged by local governments to celebrate legal adulthood. Sasaki’s mother called the Rikuzentakata’s mayor and asked if her son could attend the event staged by the city.
Ofunato’s ceremony was in the afternoon and Ritsuzentaka’s was in the morning, creating a chance for Sasaki to attend both.
Roki Sasaki pitches for the Chiba Lotte Marines during a 2024 game against the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.
(Ryoichiro Kida / Associated Press)
“I lived half of the time in both places,” Sasaki told reporters at the time. “Both are special places packed with memories.”
Murakami approached Sasaki on the day of the event.
“I thought he might’ve forgotten me,” Murakami said, “but he remembered.”
Murakami continued, “I figured he considered Ofunato to be his hometown. But after he became a pro, I started feeling more and more that he also thought of Rikuzentakata as his hometown.”
Despite the horrifying memories of the tsunami, Murakami said he understands why Sasaki visits Rikuzentakata as often as he does.
“This is where he lived with his dad, grandpa and grandma,” Murakami said. “I think he doesn’t want to forget that.”
When Sasaki earned his first career victory with the Marines in 2021, he was asked what he wanted to do with the game ball.
“I want to hand it to my parents,” Sasaki said.
The specific word he used for parents was ryoshin — both parents.
In November, before traveling to Los Angeles to take meetings with major league teams, Sasaki worked out in Rikuzentakata for about a week, reserving time at the local baseball field under a friend’s name. Each day, he went to Shikairo for lunch and again for dinner.
Rikuzentakata’s city hall features a banner that reads “Major (league) challenge! Fly out into the world, Roki Sasaki!”
(Dylan Hernández / Los Angeles Times)
Murakami, who said he views Sasaki through “the eyes of a parent,” encouraged his former player to sign with the San Diego Padres so that he could learn from Yu Darvish.
Murakami said of Sasaki’s eventual choice of the Dodgers, “He will be on television more. It makes it easier to cheer him on.”
Rikuzentakata will host a small viewing party for Sasaki’s scheduled start on Wednesday, even though showing the game in public for 50 or 60 people will set back the municipality 150,000 yen — or about $1,000.
“Since I turned pro, there were times things didn’t go well,” Sasaki said. “They continued to cheer me on with the same level of passion and that’s provided me with emotional support. I’d like to express my appreciation with my play.”
His birthplace remains firm in its support of him.
“You can do it!” read a series of Sasaki-themed flags that can be found around town, everywhere from the front of the fishing goods store to inside of the city museum.
There is a banner that hangs from the middle of the seven-story city hall building that reads, “Major (league) challenge! Fly out into the world, Roki Sasaki!”
The people here know he will be back.
